According to Reuters, Iraq's December 2005 parliamentary elections will
be contested by 230 parties and 21 coalitions, all vying for seats in
the the first full-term, four-year parliament since the beginning of
the 2003 war in Iraq. The elections will be conducted using a new
proportional voting system, where voters in Iraq's 18 provinces will
each see 18 different ballots using regional party lists. Additionally,
the parliament will consist of 275 seats, with 45 of them to be elected
as "compensatory seats" to parties that do not win seats under the
regional list elections but win enough votes nationally to cross the
treshold for a seat at the national level

Most observers saw Iraq's January 2005 elections as more successful than
many had believed possible. Voter turnout was comparable to American
turnout in our recent presidential race, candidates representing a wide
variety of perspectives were elected and women won historic numbers of
seats. All of these specific successes were made possible by Iraq's use
of a form of proportional voting very different from the winner-take-all
election systems currently most common in America. The January 2005
vote in Iraq was carried out on the basis of national party lists. The
whole country was treated as a single electoral district, within which
voters voted for parties rather than individuals. Seats were then
allocated in proportion to parties’ shares of the vote. A further
stipulation that every third name on a party's list be a woman ensured
a high degree of women's representation.

U.N, Iraqi and American election officials approved using a national
party list system in June 2004 because of the immediate political
situation in the country. Iraq is fractured and unstable nation, with
different religious and ethnic groups, who are frequently antagonistic
towards one another. In addition, many areas are plagued by terrorism
and insurgency, making it difficult for election officials to enter to
draw up districts or for candidates to campaign.

Given this context, a national party list system presents clear
advantages. The election system keeps the threshold of inclusion as low
as possible, giving minority groups a realistic chance of election. A
party can win one of the Iraqi parliament’s 275 seats with as little as
0.36% of the vote. At the same time, a party hoping to win a large
share of the seats will have to appeal to an equally large share of the
population. This encouraged the major groups to put together slates
with broad-based appeal, drawing candidates from across the
geographical and ideological spectrums. The Kurdish slate, for
instance, was composed of two parties acting in coalition who had
previously fought a war with one another. In this way, the system
allows as numerous different groups to be included in the government,
and so have a hand in drafting the constitution. An election system
that would have excluded minority groups such as the Kurds or the Sunni
could have destabilized the country, potentially even leading to civil
war. Similar considerations resulted in the adoption of a national list
system in South Africa after then end of apartheid.

At the same time, a party list system was seen as one of the best ways
of safeguarding the security of candidates who might be the targets of
insurgent attacks. By standing as members of lists, rather than as
individuals, candidates who felt at risk could hide their identities.
Moreover, when the vote is carried out on a nationwide basis, there is
no need for candidates to campaign in unstable areas.Criticisms of the national list:

The national party list system, however, began to come under criticism
as the date of the election drew closer. It became clear that the
system would result in a legislature whose composition did not match
the demographic makeup of the country entirely accurately.

A national party list guarantees all racial, ethnic, religious and
ideological groups in a population fair representation, so long as all
groups turn out to vote in equal number. However, if members of one
group do not vote in proportion to their share of the population, they
will lose out on representation. In Iraq, several Sunni political
leaders demanded that Sunni voters boycott the elections, in protest of
the continued American presence in the country. The continued
insurgency, which was largely concentrated in Sunni areas, also
intimidated voters and prevented many of them from going to the polls.

The result was that the over-all turnout of around 58% masked some
drastic differences between different regions and ethnic groups. In the
largely Sunni Anbar province, for instance, only about 2% of eligible
voters cast ballots. By contrast, the turnout in some Kurdish regions
was as high as 92%. These trends were reflected in who won seats.
Sunnis make up over 30% of the population, but the main Sunni Party,
the Iraqis, won only 1.8% of the vote, which translates into just five
seats. The high turnout in Kurdish areas meant that the principal
Kurdish party won more than a quarter of the seats, although Iraq’s
population is only 15-20% Kurd.

The new Iraqi parliament will be charged, among other things, with
drawing up a constitution governing future elections. Various
alternatives might either increase the representativeness of Iraq’s
government, or further exclude minority groups. FairVote has used the
January 2005 election results to model how the parliament would look
under different electoral systems to show how, although different
election systems will address different concerns, proportional representation
remains clearly superior to winner-take-all elections.

Regional Lists:

When it became clear that the national list system was likely to result
in the under-representation of Sunnis in government, some commentators
suggested that a more sensible idea might have been to divide the
country into regions, assign set numbers of seats to each region based
on population, and conduct elections using party lists within these
regional districts. Systems of this type have been used successfully in
Finland and Denmark for many years. Since the different ethnic and
religious groups in Iraq tend to live in different areas, this method
of election might well lead to the legislature more accurately
reflecting the population as a whole. Even if the turnout in a Sunni
area was very low, Sunni representatives could still hope to win seats
and wouldn’t be swamped by high turnouts in other areas.

We’ve
modeled how regional lists might have worked in Iraq in 2005 on the
basis of the actual election returns. Using Iraq’s 18 pre-existing
provinces as regional districts, we assigned seats to each province
based on 1991 census data about the population of different areas.
Overseas voters were assigned to a four-seat district. Using the
provinces as districts is not ideal because they vary so greatly in
population. Baghdad would be assigned 64 seats, and a party could win
representation there with less than 2% of the vote. By contrast,
sparsely populated provinces such as Muthanna and Dahuk would have only
five seats, and 20% of the vote would be necessary to win. Because many
areas are unstable, though, it would be difficult to gather enough
demographic information to create more proportional districts, and too
obviously drawing lines to increase particular groups’ chances of
winning seats would be politically contentious.

Who would win under regional lists?

Party/Coalition

National %

National List Seats

Regional List Seats

United Iraqi Alliance

48.19%

140

145

Democratic Patriotic Alliance of Kurdistan

25.73%

75

62

Iraqi List

13.82%

40

48

The Iraqis

1.78%

5

12

Iraqi Turkmen Front

1.11%

3

2

National Independent Cadres and Elites

0.83%

3

0

People's Union

0.83%

2

0

Islamic Group of Kurdistan

0.72%

2

0

Islamic Action Organization in Iraq

0.51%

2

0

National Democratic Alliance

0.44%

1

0

National Rafidain List

0.43%

1

0

Reconcilliation and Liberation Bloc

0.36%

1

2

Iraqi Assembly of National Unity

0.28%

0

0

Assembly of Independent Democrats

0.28%

0

0

Iraqi Islamic Party

0.25%

0

2

Islamic Dawa Movement

0.23%

0

0

Iraqi National Gathering

0.22%

0

2

What would change:

The principle Sunni party – the Iraqis – would see their share of
the seats more than double from five to twelve. Iyad Allawi’s secular
Iraqi List would also do better, primarily by picking up votes in
predominately Sunni areas.

The Kurds would gain fewer seats, though still more than their share of the population.

Which small parties gained seats would change drastically.
Parties such as the People’s Union, a communist party which had a level
of support which was fairly consistent across the nation, but not
concentrated in any particular region, would lose out. By contrast,
parties such as the Iraqi National Gathering, which had less overall
national support, but picked up 11% of the vote in the province of
Salahad, would win representation.

What would stay the same:

The balance of power would not change. Under both a national and
a regional list, the Shia party, the United Iraqi Alliance, would have
a majority of seats in the parliament, but not the two thirds majority
needed under the current constitution to choose a President. The UIA
would need to reach out to one of the other large vote-getters – most
likely the Democratic Patriotic Alliance of Kurdistan – to select an
executive.

Although Sunni representation in government would increase under
regional lists, it would still fall well short of the Sunni share of
the population. This is because turnout among Sunni in some areas was
so low, that minority groups still won disproportionate numbers of the
seats within majority-Sunni areas.

Although regional lists would result in some changes to who exactly
won seats in parliament, it would have little effect on which groups
were in positions of power and who was able to control the government.

How would winner-take-all work in Iraq?

By contrast, it is possible to say with a high level of certainty
that a winner-take-all system would serve to exacerbate the problems
caused by the low Sunni turnout and drastically reduce the
representativeness of the parliament. If all the provinces were treated
as at-large winner-take-all districts (the method of election used for
many U.S. County Commissions) only the three biggest parties could hope
to win seats, and the Sunnis would have no representation in government
at all.

Party/Coalition

National %

National List Seats

At-large seats

United Iraqi Alliance

48.19%

140

192

Democratic Patriotic Alliance of Kurdistan

25.73%

75

69

Iraqi List

13.82%

40

14

The Iraqis

1.78%

5

0

Iraqi Turkmen Front

1.11%

3

0

National Independent Cadres and Elites

0.83%

3

0

People's Union

0.83%

2

0

Islamic Group of Kurdistan

0.72%

2

0

Islamic Action Organization in Iraq

0.51%

2

0

National Democratic Alliance

0.44%

1

0

National Rafidain List

0.43%

1

0

Reconcilliation and Liberation Bloc

0.36%

1

0

Iraqi Assembly of National Unity

0.28%

0

0

Assembly of Independent Democrats

0.28%

0

0

Iraqi Islamic Party

0.25%

0

0

Islamic Dawa Movement

0.23%

0

0

Iraqi National Gathering

0.22%

0

0

Moreover, the United Iraqi Alliance, although they actually won
less than half of the popular vote, would end up with more than two
thirds of the seats: a super-majority which would allow them to control
who was elected to the executive without any input from any of the
other groups. Giving all of the power to a single ethnic group would
likely greatly destabilize the country, even leading to civil war.

Although single member districts might disperse power more widely,
since it is easier for a single group to dominate a smaller area, they
still do nothing to guarantee representation for minorities. In areas
with more than two viable parties, it would be possible for parties to
win seats with much less than half of the total vote, and there would
be no mechanism in place to ensure that the overall makeup of the
legislature even closely mirrored the wishes of the voters, much less
those of the population as a whole.

The stakes in Iraq’s elections are high. A legislature that is
perceived as unrepresentative has the potential to lead to a popular
rejection of democracy as a whole, and a decent into civil war. This is
one reason why so much attention has been paid to the design of Iraq’s
electoral system. But it is just as important to have fair elections in
America as it is in Iraq. Though the consequences are less explosive,
Americans suffer as much from the negative effects of winner-take-all
elections as Iraqis could. America deserves intelligent electoral
system design and serious consideration of proportional representation just as
much as Iraq does.

In Detroit, there have been three mayors in the past two years and the current one has come under scrutiny. Perhaps a system like instant runoff voting will help bring political stability to motor city.